Scott Willis thought for a moment about Government Cheese, the band with whom he spent hundreds of 1980s and ’90s evenings onstage, jumping around and singing rock ’n’ roll songs with names like “Fish Stick Day,” “Mammaw Drives The Bus” and “Camping On Acid.”

“We weren’t the coolest band, believe me,” says Willis, who will perform at the Government Cheese reunion show Saturday night at The Rutledge. “We were a bunch of geeks. But we’d do anything to keep people entertained. Lamp shades on the head or anything else.”

Government Cheese, which included Willis, Tommy Womack, Billy Mack Hill, Joe “Elvis” King and Chris “Viva Las Vegas” Becker, was an outsider outfit. Based in Bowling Green, the band wedged its way into a vibrant Nashville rock scene ruled by Jason and the Scorchers, Webb Wilder, the White Animals, Walk the West, the Royal Court of China and other bands that laid the ground now walked upon by the Kings of Leon, Jack White, The Black Keys and other modern-day Music City rock stalwarts.

The Cheese signed with Nashville indie Reptile Records, garnered some college radio airplay and watched as 1987 single “Face to Face” made its way onto MTV but never found much in the way of mainstream success. When Womack wrote 1995’s Cheese Chronicles, a memoir about his time in the combo, he subtitled it “the true story of a rock ’n’ roll band you’ve never heard of.” Though Womack downplayed the band’s impact and instrumental acumen in his book, a newly issued, two-CD anthology called Government Cheese, 1985-1995 makes a case for the Cheese as an energetic and intriguing, Kentucky-warped composite of the Scorchers’ revved-up rock and R.E.M.’s elliptical pop.

“If you took R.E.M. and the Scorchers and threw them together, you’d almost have the Cheese,” says Bowling Green native Bill Lloyd, who found 1980s chart success with country duo Foster & Lloyd and who remains a prominent Nashville musician and songwriter. “And then they had songs that were funny and engaging, which was a real strength of the band. It wasn’t about stellar musicianship, it was about attitude and about being a band of brothers.”Continue reading →

Many longtime Music City rock 'n' roll fans have fond memories of a Kentucky-based band called Government Cheese, a group whose exploits were chronicled in guitarist/songwriter Tommy Womack's riotous memoir, Cheese Chronicles: The True Story of a Rock 'n' Roll Band You've Never Heard Of.

The Cheese's catalog has long been out of print, but this week Womack is trumpeting the release of a double-disc set called Government Cheese: 1985-1995. Womack, whose co-write (with Will Kimbrough) "Nobody From Nowhere" was recently covered by Jimmy Buffett, began working on the retrospective nearly five years ago.

He acquired old Cheese tapes from former manager and Reptile Records founder Scott Tutt in 2006, then began collecting donations from the band's fans to get the work back in print. The finished product includes loads of previously unreleased material, and song choices include "Mammaw Drives The Bus," "The Shrubbery's Dead (Where Danny Used To Fall)," "Cattle Prod" and "Camping on Acid."

"Joe Elvis King, Skott Willis, Billy Mack Hill, Viva Las Vegas and I can prove now that we were a much better band than I wrote us out to be," Womack wrote on this www.tommywomack.com website.

The double-album is available locally at Grimey's (1604 Eighth Ave. S., 254‑4801) as well as at all the usual online spots.

Watch Government Cheese performing "Camping on Acid" in the above video.

Click to see a gallery of photos from Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band's Saturday stop at Bridgestone Arena (this photo: Mandy Lunn/The Tennessean).

It's famously customary for Jimmy Buffett -- and some of his diehard fans -- to don swimming trunks at his concerts. Saturday night in Nashville, however, the attire wasn't just festive, it was downright practical.

The carefree rocker and a surprisingly packed house of "Parrotheads" braved the historic flooding of Middle Tennessee for an unflappably fun show at Bridgestone Arena, mere blocks from an overflowing Cumberland River.

"We're a lot more comforting in a natural disaster than an insurance company, I'll tell you that much," Buffett told the crowd early into his set. "I know you'd find a way (here)," he added. "Parrotheads find their way around obstacles."

Certainly, few audiences are as determined to have a good time as Buffett's. Beach balls and banners soared as he kicked off his set with "Nobody From Nowhere," a tune off his new Buffet Hotel album written by local rock songsmiths Will Kimbrough and Tommy Womack. Buffett and band glowed almost as brightly as his near-blinding stage lights, trading solos and banter with laid-back charm.Continue reading →

As Edgers watched dozens of mediocre bands reuniting, he began to wonder why his beloved Kinks couldn't get back together. And then he began a one-man campaign to convince the band to reform.

The fruits, or lack thereof, of that labor are revealed in Do It Again, a movie that is featured as part of the Nashville Film Festival -- it was shown Saturday night, and will be again on Tuesday, April 20 at 2 p.m.

The movie includes cameos from Zooey Deschanel, Sting, Clive Davis and others, and though (SPOILER ALERT!) it might not end with famously combative Kinks brothers Ray and Dave Davies getting together on stage, there are plenty of musical, dramatic and comedic high points.

Will Kimbrough was writing about his wife and daughters. And then he was singing about his wife and daughters, and audiences were responding in all the right ways. And then he was putting an album together, and he wound up deciding to open the album with his family song, “Three Angels.”

“Then I thought, ‘If I put that sweet song there, I can’t put some cynical, smarty-pants pop songs after it,” said Kimbrough, 45. “But it’s fine. I think I’m worn out of irony. I don’t hate it, but I’ve done it. Maybe irony is a young man’s game. After a while, things aren’t ironic anymore: It’s just life.”

Kimbrough will likely sing “Three Angels” twice on Friday, March 12 at The Basement, as he plays two album-release celebration shows, one at 7 p.m. and the other at 9 p.m. He’ll be able to squeeze all of Wings’ songs into the set lists if he so chooses, as the 10-song album runs less than 40 total minutes.

That’s somewhat unusual, as album girth seems to be expanding in these digital days, but Kimbrough’s recent Beatles listening helped inspire him to pare back.

“I got the Beatles mono box set, and I put Hard Days Night and Help on one CD: These are 29-minute records, and between there it was something like 28 songs in about an hour, and every one is a classic. I’m a fan of the jam at the gig, and of making it concise on the record. And if there was ever a time for two-minute songs, it’s now.”Continue reading →

Seminal Nashville country-punk band Jason & The Scorchers' first album of new material since 1996, Halcyon Times, is due out Feb. 23.

The Scorchers set Nashville on its musical ear in the early 1980s, arriving with country roots and a furious whirl of guitars, bass and drums. The group won the Americana Music Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008, and last year founding members Jason Ringenberg and Warner E. Hodges joined the new rhythm section of bassist Al Collins and drummer Pontus Snibb in tracking Halcyon Times.

The album was co-produced by Hodges and Brad Jones, and it features guest contributions from Dan Baird and Tommy Womack. The album will come with a 24-page booklet, with lyrics, photos and liner notes.

They’re not the dreams from his youth, like when he would imagine himself playing on stage with the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. That dream and many others have come true.

Hundreds of mandolin players tread the paths Bush cleared with his New Grass Revival band mates in the 1970s and 80s, and Bush’s new album, Circles Around Me, stands as his most self-actualized and best-received solo work. Still boyish at 57, Bush has forged a place for himself as one of acoustic music’s respected elders. He won a lifetime achievement award at this year’s Americana Music Honors & Awards. And his dreams are different now.

“I seem to dream a lot these days about trying to get to the show,” he said. “And I guess that just means that I still really want to get to the show. The older I get, the more I love to play. This gift of playing music can leave you at any time.”

Bush has twice survived cancer, and the gift of playing has not left him, save for a time in the mid-1990s when he broke his right elbow, and another time in the mid-’90s when he broke his left elbow. Clumsiness has proven more problematic than disease. He has ceased touring through the end of the year while recovering from a non-clumsiness-related foot surgery, but that hasn’t kept him from playing his mandolin. He released Circles Around Me, his third solo album in five years, in October.Continue reading →